Friday, 28 October 2011

Amy at Amy's Creative Side is hosting the bloggers quilt festival - and being a very newbie quilt blogger I thought I'd get involved in my first one :) - its so inspiring to see all the fabulous quilts being created around the world!

This isn't a new quilt, but it IS a recent one (last month I think...) and it is my favorite I've made so far. I'm a big fan of making baby quilts and this one is no exception. My inspiration for this one was Alissa's great Spark's baby quilt tutorial (found here).

Fabric: Magenta Bird Tree by Saffron Craig

Size: 40 1/2" x 54"

I'm not usually a fan of pink, but I love the combination of pink, green and purple in this quilt. I am also a HUGE fan of Saffron Craig's fabrics and I thought they lent themselves perfectly to this style of quilt. I was a bit dubious about using black in a baby quilt, but I love the effect it has bordering the squares.

I quilted it along the black sashing in black thread, and then hand-stitched around each of the centre squares.

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

I have had this quilt top finished for a month or so, and rather than finish it off I started a couple of other quilts.

Whoops! I now have two part-pieced quilts on the go, another quilt top ready to quilt, and a birthday quilt to start for my friend's daughter who turns 3 in a couple of weeks. And now I've written it all down I feel quite overwhelmed... I guess I'll just knuckle down and get it done (its a good thing its something I love, hey?)

Anyhoo, I was really undecided about how to quilt it - and even when I was half-way through quilting this one I had a bit of a panic attack and seriously wondered if it was going to look ok. But once I'd finished it and bound it I changed my mind - I really love it! The texture looks great - the lines are uneven widths in the most part, and some are wavy (which was deliberate... although my other-half's first comment was "but some of them aren't straight! and they're all different widths!", which kind of didn't set my heart at ease :/) - but I think it suits the fabric. And I love how it looks on the back of the quilt too.

Saturday, 22 October 2011

Other half home last night = stole an hour today to finish my sewing machine cover!

As I was making it I wasn't sure if it would be big enough - but its actually on the loose side. Its a little short too. My piecing on the patchwork strip wasn't all that accurate (I've never pieced 2" squares, and they're nowhere near as forgiving as 5" ones!), so I had to make it a little shorter than it was supposed to be. But still I LOVE it - and after all, my machine does so much hard work for me, I figure it deserves a snuggly little bed ;)

The fabric I used is the same as the mat. Both the cover and mat are quilted on fusible batting using a quilt as you go method. They're both lined with tomato Kona, and the cover also has heavy-weight interfacing on the back of all the batting. Both of these were really fun projects, and came together really fast - if you are interested in making the cover, you can actually buy the pattern here. The mat (along with a thread catcher and pincushion - my next projects) are available as a pattern as well. Mine ended up quite different, but the basic shapes and layout is the same.

Friday, 21 October 2011

For the last few weeks my partner has been working interstate, so I've been single-parenting my three kids. This has NOT been conducive to much sewing time, sadly - although I have managed to start a new quilt (using Lizzy House's 1001 Peeps which I LOVE!). And I've decided to funk up my sewing space a bit by making a new sewing machine mat, cover and pincushion (from a couple of patterns in Australian Homespun (Vol 11 #11, and Vol 12 #1).

I finished off the mat last night...

and it now has a new home under my machine!

The red birdy-circley fabric was part of a bundle I won on ebay a while ago - its quite heavy weight so it was perfect for this project (and I'd been trying to find the perfect use for it for a while!) It is designed by Australian fabric company Surface Art - it's called Mikko (cotton drill) and I just love love it. In fact I have a new fabric obsession - Moyra's work is just divine (and I couldn't resist ordering another piece of her cotton drill fabric!) The pieced part is bug spot and dandelion circles from Saffron Craig, along with tomato Kona, snow Kona and some grey homespun I picked up from Spotlight. Its a bit hard to see from the pics, but the part that hangs down in front of my machine is a series of pockets (that are about to be filled up with all my bits and pieces). I am hoping this means I won't lose my quick unpick, and embroidery scissors quite as often (well I can hope, can't I?)

Thursday, 13 October 2011

This was my first custom quilt made with fabric chosen by my customer, which wasn't part of my stash. She wanted an Australiana cot quilt for her baby's nursery, and had spotted this range of fabric designed by Leesa Chandler for Robert Kaufman. This fabric range is gorgeous - Australian wildflowers and leaves with gold highlights. The photos really don't do it justice - its been wet and windy in Tassie this week, so I didn't have an opportunity to take outdoor photos before I sent it off.

The sashing and binding are cream cotton, and I stipple quilted it in cream thread.

Saturday, 8 October 2011

I am completely obsessed with Saffron Craig fabric. Especially the Bird Tree range in magenta and green. If you haven't discovered her, check out her online store here - it is totally worth it, I promise! Her fabrics are just beautiful!

I have made a few quilts using her fabrics (Beetle Bugs and indigo Bird Tree) - and I happily have a lot more of them left in my stash. I really wasn't sure how I was going to use the magenta bird tree fabrics though - until I came across this tutorial (thanks Alissa!!). So I based this quilt loosely on Alissa's Sparks baby quilt.

I made the inner blocks a bit bigger, and added an extra border of fabric around each block, but the general design is the same. Apart from the Bird Tree fabric, I used Kona solids (hyacinth, plum, cactus and black) and Amy Butler quilting solids in fuchsia. I have to admit I felt a bit weird using black in a baby quilt, but it works so well with the other colours!

I quilted along the black sashing 1/4" away from each seam, but because the blocks are so big I needed to do some more.

It took me ages to decide what to do - I toyed with free motion quilting the solid areas in each block (leaving the centre square un-quilted), but decided to hand-quilt around each centre square instead. I used DMC embroidery thread (from my past life as a cross-stitch fanatic :) )

I really, really love this quilt - definitely my favorite I have made!